Music Industry News Roundup #5

Music Industry News Roundup Here’s the music industry news roundup from the last week. There’s much more diverse news than previous weeks, but streaming continues to dominate the conversation.

Taylor Swift is the highest earning celebrity. The thing is, she didn’t get that way from selling music. She learned early that it’s the brand that sells.

Elizabeth Warren has it in for music monopolies. She has her eye keenly on Apple, Google and Amazon. This is not the person to have angry with you, regardless how large the enterprise.

Spotify’s trying some hosted radio shows. It seems like Apple Music’s Beats 1 is making an impact, so Spotify’s trying something similar, but without the big name DJs.

Spotify looks to go public this year. In related news, 5 sources have stated that the company will file an IPO soon. I bet the investors are happy at the prospect of getting some money back, but what will the market say?

Sirius XM subscribers pass 30 million. Everyone thought that the satellite business was dying, but that’s not the case at all. You know what? It’s all about the programming (something that terrestrial radio should learn).

Pandora is teetering. The major shareholders aren’t happy and they’ve brought in a high-powered consultant to explore a sale.

Artists not seeing much from secondary ticketing. Not much of the money made by Stubhub, Viagogo or Ticketmaster seems to be making its way back into the pocketbooks of the artists. Isn’t this a bigger issue than YouTube royalty rates?

Selena Gomez social media posts are worth $550,000 a piece. Astonishing but apparently true, Ms Gomez ranks #1 with sponsors who are willing to pay to be included in her posts.

Nielsen’s mid-year charts. Drake, Adele, Rhianna dominate. No surprises here except for Bowie’s Blackstar being the #1 vinyl album so far (but with only 57,000 copies sold). Sales are still falling, with Adele’s 25 leading the pack with only 1.4 million in sales.

That’s the News Roundup of what went on in the music industry last week. Let’s see what next week brings.

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